Page 72 of Glasshouses

“Can I see it?” She held out her hands.

I took it out of the evidence bag and passed it to her. She held it, running her fingers along the grain of wood.

“What is it, Lily?”

She opened the lid, examining inside. The keys and the small jars were still there, a rather grotesque keepsake.

“My mother kept them. I thought they’d have been lost in the fire.” She lifted out one of the jars. “There our first teeth that we lost, and locks of our hair. My father found this once and threw it across the room, calling it sentimental. He was not a nice man.”

“What about the keys in there?”

“They’re for doors in our house. That one,” she held up a blackened key that could’ve been from a Victorian horror story. “Was for the room at the top where my mum did the accounts. No one was allowed in there.”

The room that had been emptied. “What about the others?”

“The pantry. That was locked so we couldn’t just get food, and the cellars. The keys scared me.” She put them back in the box and snapped the lid closed, almost throwing it back at me.

“I think your mother did love you in her own way.” I thought of my birth mother and how she had loved me, just never more than she’d loved herself. I thought of the man whose surname I’d chosen, a man I’d never met because he’d died rescuing a boy who’d fallen into the sea.

People didn’t come with a textbook. I’d be out of a job if they did.

For a moment I thought Lily was about to cry, then her expression changed, sun revealing itself from behind a cloud.

“Damien!” She stood up, big smiles, fingertips pressed together. “That seemed to go brilliantly.”

He nodded, looking shell-shocked. “It was a lot easier than I thought. Thank you for giving up your Sunday.” He looked from Lily to me. “Everything okay in here?”

“Absolutely. Detective McAllister was just telling me they have a lead on who may be targeting me, someone connected with another crime, but hopefully it’ll all be sorted soon.” She walked across to the door, catching up with Damien.

I followed, watching her talk to him, almost forgetting me as she went through what the reporter had said to her.

I left the house clearer about one thing; Lily was no more of a victim than me.

Chapter Twenty

I left the Fishbowl for Andrew Smith’s house just before lunchtime on Monday, content in the knowledge that I now at least had a working toilet on the first floor, thanks to a photo from Taz. We were also sure that Roselea had been visited by at least one other person than Cade after combing through his videos. There were five in total of Roselea, not all covering the same rooms, but most areas were filmed at least three times. I doubted Cade had noticed it, but some of the objects still in the house looked like they’d been moved, the ones on the sideboard where there’d still been the remnants of mail. Jenna’s team were paying another visit in the afternoon, but my main task was speaking to The Holding’s senior leader.

Verity was with me, riding shotgun and gawping at the houses we were passing. They were mainly detached with kerb appeal, the area one of the more expensive to buy in, although they were still in a different league to the houses on Damien’s road.

“We haven’t found what his main job was,” she said. “How could he afford to buy a house on here?”

“He’s owned it for fifteen years, so it wouldn’t have been as expensive then, but I imagine we’ll find out how he afforded it when we go through The Holding’s accounts in more detail.” We’d brought in a civilian worker who specialised in forensic accounts to make sense of the pages and pages of invoices. It was likely it’d transfer over to white collar crime, as there were already discrepancies in the accounting around tax, which was one less headache for us. Our job was just to catch the killer.

I pulled up outside Smith’s house, noting the neat garden, pots at the front of the house containing herbs. There was a car on the drive, a blue Lexus that was registered to Andrew Smith, so I was hoping he would be in.

He was and he answered the door before I could knock.

“Hello.” He looked puzzled, glancing from me to Verity. “If you’re selling something - ”

He stopped talking when he saw my ID. “I’m DS McAllister and this is DC Verity Golding. I’m here to ask you some questions about The Holding and two of its members who died last week.”

“Oh. Right. You’d best come in then.” He opened the door and stepped out of the way so I could enter.

The house was a complete contrast to Damien’s. Inspiration had been taken from the nineties, or maybe it hadn’t been decorated since then. We were led to a lounge with a brick fireplace, a definite relic from a few decades ago, a set of money bank pigs on the mantlepiece.

I sunk into a patterned sofa, worn but clean and cushion free.

“Can I get either of you a drink?” Andrew Smith hovered above us, his face pale.